Intriguing visitors from parallel worlds

Akron/Family draw on a wide range of influences, from Jimi Hendrix to natural scenes, such as a hawk in flight. Photo / Supplied by Arch Hill Records

With Merriweather Post Pavilion, the strange little group known as Animal Collective have come up with their best album yet - and one of the records of 2009.

Merriweather - their eighth long player, named after an outdoor music venue near Baltimore, Maryland where they formed in 2000 - is also the band's most accessible, with its playful Beach Boys pop melodies and lush sonic mood. Yet it's still a challenging listen thanks to the group's love of underlying chaos, off-kilter rhythms and general lack of any definable song structure.

There's the relentless twinkling spectral star bursts of My Girls; Summertime Clothes agitates and builds up to become the catchiest, and most thigh-slapping tune on the album; and Brothersport brings the album to an end with a riotous outburst of jamming.

The result is something multi-instrumentalist and singer Dave Portner (nicknamed Avey Tare) describes simply as "the Animal Collective melting pot".

"We take all our influences to heart so I think on the one hand you will have something like Merriweather, which shows a little of how much we like pop music, then you'll have something that's going to be more of a visual [experience]. And then there's where the two worlds meet, which is where we're trying to be at most of the time," he says.

Portner started the band - although collective is a more appropriate term considering the members' numerous side projects and solo work - with Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), Brian Weitz (Geologist), and Josh Dibb (Deakin), who were all childhood friends.

They have toured the world extensively and built up a solid following, but with the release of 2007's Strawberry Jam their popularity took off. However, Portner admits Merriweather has taken their profile to a whole new level. "It's allowed us to go places that we've never been before in terms of touring - and the amount of touring."

Playing live is an important part of Animal Collective's creative process as it helps shape their albums. "It's kind of like you're going up a mountain and you collect all this stuff, and then you reach the peak, and for us that's when we decide to record the record and everything feels really strong and the energy of the shows is really intense, and then the album gets released and we start to come down the mountain. Now we're waiting to go up the next one," he says.

The group's next project is a "visual album", which they have already submitted to January's Sundance Film Festival and it will also be ready for release early next year.

The idea for a film came about in 2006 when the band were asked to do a tour documentary, something they were not keen on since "we like our private time".

"It was to cool be approached, but to us we are kind of uncomfortable with cameras around, and that band documentary thing is kind of tired and hard to get out of the confines of that structure. So we decided to do something a little bit different and something that combined our musical styles and song forms but with a new added challenge of having a visual element.

"We came up with the idea of little vignettes that are synched up to some sort of sound, and it could be out-there textural stuff, to something more song-based.

"It's different from anything we've done before and from anything I've seen before. Expect something a lot darker than Merriweather," he laughs.

It might sound rude but the question has to be asked of Seth Olinsky from Akron/Family: Do you have to be a little bit nuts to make music like theirs? You know, a little round-the-bend?

"Sure," he sniggers. "You know, just the other day I was wondering if I'm a little more nuts than I think," he continues on the phone from his home in Portland, Oregon.

One minute they come across like gentle country folk, and the next they're launching into squally white noise guitar freak-outs, with electronic wizardry and red-blooded rock'n'roll coming together all in one song.

Olinsky reasons that their sound is influenced by many things - from avant garde music and improvised jazz to straight ahead rock music, bands like the Grateful Dead, and "we all love the Beatles" - and they harness it to come up with a unique sound.

He says Gravelly Mountains of the Moon, off latest album Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, references the Grateful Dead's 1969 song Mountains of the Moon and is a fiery and noisy nod to Jimi Hendrix.

Elsewhere the album goes from extreme, with the demented MBF sounding like the band has come home from a night on the town and gone berserk in the studio, to beautiful refrains like River (a plucky little porch song) and The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen and Set Em Free, Pt 1, two heart-warming country songs.

"So there is lots of straight ahead stuff in there, but we just kind of mash it up. But it's hard for me to say because for me it more or less makes sense," he laughs.

When Olinsky was younger he was inspired by musicians like John Coltrane, he says as he gets older, he takes more inspiration from "life in general".

"Inspiration is a funny thing because there are broad inspirations like friends and family, or a walk in the park, and then there's something like a bottlecap on the floor lying a particular way when the sunlight hits which can set off a spark of inspiration ... The way a hawk catches a draft of wind and then falls, and you can be momentarily blown away by that and you wish you could do that.

"Those kind of things are everywhere and then there's a song. Mostly they turn out to be bad songs and I keep those for my solo records," he laughs.

Since starting out in 2002 they may not have set the music world alight - because it's not that type of music. But Olinsky and his bandmates are happy with their lot. "You make these records and they really don't sell that much," he says honestly. "They are traded or stolen off the internet, which doesn't bother me terribly, because the good side is that all these people know about us when we go on tour because they've gotten our record passed to them. Of course, the flipside is we have to tour all the time. But for us things have gone great. I'm getting to do what I love."

LOWDOWN

Who: Animal Collective and Akron/Family

Where & when: Animal Collective, Powerstation, December 8; Akron/Family, Kings Arms, December 15

Latest albums: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective; Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free - Akron/Family